TERRY SKILLEN’S HOME
PAGE
INTRODUCTION
You are welcome to my page
on the Skillen.net website. Let me share a little about myself. I am a fifth generation Canadian descendent
of Francis Skillen and Mary Kerns. They arrived in Canada in 1834 from Ireland. The
couple resided in Bytown, Upper Canada for about a year or so before settling on 100
acres of land in the Gatineau
River Valley near Farrellton, Quebec. Francis and Mary had two sons
and eight daughters who survived to adulthood. You can access Francis Skillen’s
family tree from the Skillen.net home page. I am a descendent of their son John
who married Ann O’Rourke. I have posted my family tree including the
branches of my father and mother.
For a reason that is still unclear to me my
great, great grandfather Francis sold his farm in Wakefield Township about the year 1870. His son
James had left Canada for the
USA sometime during the Civil War. I
have checked the USA Civil War Veteran’s records and I have not found a
reference to James which makes me question the belief by some that he served in
the Union army. Perhaps a descendent of James will enlighten us . From what I can determine, for some years prior to his
marriage to Anne O’Rourke, my great grandfather John worked for Anne’s father on
the O’Rourke farm in Lowe township. The O'Rourke farm was about a mile from the Skillen farm.
Eventually, John
married Ann and after the death of her father the couple took over the O’Rourke
farm. John and Ann had five children, including my grandfather James Francis
Xavier. John and Ann died within two months of each other in 1896. My
grandfather Jim was 16 when his father died. He took over the farm. “Jim” Skillen built a clapboard house to replace the original O’Rourke
two storey log house. Jim married Henrietta Lyons in 1905 and the couple had 11
children, eight of whom survived into adulthood. My father, Alfred, the couple’s
second child and first to survive into adulthood was born and raised on the
family farm in Low
Township. Francis sold the
original Skillen land grant to his neighbour sometime around 1870. Alfred moved
to Sudbury, Ontario in the mid 1930’s to find employment
in the nickel mines. My parents met in Garson and married in 1939. I was born in
Sudbury in 1940 and lived in Garson, a mining
village, until 1949 when my father bought a small automotive repair business in
Carleton
Place, located in eastern Ontario. My sister Freda
was born in 1941 and Linda was born in 1946. Linda passed away in 1978 just a
few weeks before her 32nd birthday.
At the age of eighteen I left high school
before graduating and I joined the Royal Canadian Navy. I served as a
Victualling Storesman on two destroyers, HMCS Algonquin and HMCS Athabaskan
during a five year period between 1958 and 1963. During action stations I was a
loader of shells on one of the large guns on both ships. The closest I came
to seeing action was when the Russians threatened to send missiles to
Cuba in 1962. Our ship, a tribal
class destroyer, was returning from NATO exercises in Europe when we received an order to take a position along
the expected route of the Russian ships. We were told by our Captain that we
were to intercept and stop the Russian ships. Should the Russian ships not stop
we would open fire. We took our action stations. The Russian ships did not come.
I recall that I was relieved to have avoided firing on the young Russian men who
like myself were to be cannon fodder for the politicians. That event with its
political overtones brought me to an appreciation for the need to do everything
in order to negotiate settlements.
One other event during my naval service had
a profound effect on my life. On our way from Portsmouth, England to the Azores where we were to refuel, our ship encountered a
hurricane that tossed us around for two days. When we reached the Azores the aerials had been ripped off and
the
fo'c'sle had been
damaged. Water poured into the forward lower mess where my bunk was located.
When water was creeping up to the second bunk in which I slept we abandoned the
mess and it was shored up. I remember thinking that the ship might sink. The
waves were well above the top of the mast. The ship shook and shimmied as it
slid down the wave to bottom out with a crashing thud. From deep down in the
fold of water I looked up beyond the top of the mast as one side of the wave
crash down on us and the other side drew us up to its peak, only to drop us
violently down again into the abyss. The ship rolled deeply from side to side
and bucked from fore to aft as the huge deep waves tossed it like a bit of
flotsam. Inside the ship we hung on to whatever was handy while attempting
to maintain our balance. That storm was my first exposure to the destructive
power of nature.
A short while later we emerged from the
storm. The sky was blue and clear, sun was shining and the temperature was
soothingly warm. We had survived the storm and now we were safe alongside a
jetty in the Azores Islands. I was grateful to have survived.
Shortly after the ship was tied up alongside the jetty children began to appear.
I stood on the deck a few feet from the children who, I thought, had
heard about the terrible storm and the battered ships. They knew nothing of our
brief plight. They were only interested in the money they might beg from us.
Some asked to shine our shoes for money. The children were dressed
poorly and without shoes. I was affected by the appearance of these children and
I felt deep compassion for them. I had what I would now describe as a spiritual
experience, a sense of being called to help persons lest fortunate than my self.
I felt compassion for these children and made a promise that someday I would
help people such as these poor children. Perhaps my sudden experience of
compassion resulted from a deep sense of gratitude about surviving the storm and
a new found awareness about the meaning of life. My spiritual experience may
also have been fed by the insight I had gained from the potential confrontation
with the Russian ship. When I thought of killing the Russian sailors with the
four inch shells that I would be loading into a large gun on our ship I felt
anger with the politicians of the two super powers and totally helpless to do
anything about it. The young men from Russia who were like me, adolescents,
from small towns and farms, would lose their lives because politicians could not
negotiate a solution to an ideological problem without resorting to aggression.
My view on ideological
conflict may have been naive at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. It came
from my experience as a child. When I was nine my family moved from a small
mining village in northern Ontario where most of the population consisted of
Irish Canadian and French Canadian Catholics as well as Europeans from countries
such as Italy, Finland and the Baltic states. I first became aware of an
ideological difference at the age of six when my mother announced that I would
not be going to the public school attended by my close friend who lived across
the street. A new Catholic school had been built that very year and I would be
attending it. Hmm Catholics and non Catholics, suddenly I had to take
religious differences into account. This did not sit well with me because I had
another close friend across the street on which we lived who was a Protestant. I
don't recall any religious tension or conflict in those early days of education.
I don't ever recall hearing anything negative from either of my parents about
members of other religious denominations. The only effect of this new revelation
about religious differences was to give me data about differences. Nothing came
of it that I can recall. When our family moved to Carleton Place we became
members in a minority religious group in a community split by religious
differences. I was suddenly attending a public school where I was not only the
new boy in town, but a member of the hated Catholic minority. We were a small
church congregation and all of my closest friends were Protestants. I don't
recall being rejected by those whom I befriended but on the school yard I seemed
to be a magnet for those who wanted to express their hatred or to take out their
frustrations on the new boy in town. I recall hearing the parish priest saying
from the pulpit that we (Catholics) know where we are going (Heaven) but we
can't be sure where they (Protestants) will be going. I found this comment very
confusing. How could the final reward of all my friends be in jeopardy because
they belonged to a religion different from mine. At the time I did not have the
knowledge necessary to challenge the idea. I had an intuition that what the
priest said was to be challenged. I remember hearing only that one comment from
the pulpit. I suspected that some of the same messages were being sent from the
pulpits of the Protestant churches in town. I made a decision early in life that
I would not support ideologies that treated other views with disdain and
disrespect.
Following discharge from the navy I
returned to high school in 1963. During that year I was focused on school and
religion. When I graduated from grade twelve I felt an urge to enter the
priesthood. I entered the novitiate of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate. As the
time drew near to take first vows of poverty, chastity and obedience I realized
that I could not proceed to the seminary. I left the novitiate in the summer of
1964 and proceeded on to St. Patrick’s College in Ottawa, Ontario from which
I graduated with a B.A. degree (Psychology, Sociology) granted by Carleton University, Ottawa. I graduated with a Master of Social
Work degree from the University of Toronto in 1972 and practiced social work
in the fields of corrections, education and physical rehabilitation until my
retirement in 2000.
I met Eleanor Donnelly at St. Patrick’s
College. Following graduation we married in 1969. Karen our first child was born
in May 1970. Tamara followed in 1973. Eleanor and I separated in August, 1974. I
married Catherine Carvell in 1980 and we have two children, Rebecca born in 1980
and John Adam born in 1983. Catherine and I separated in
1988. My parents survived until I was 59 years
old. Dad had a severe stroke in 1986. He was hospitalized for 14 years until his
death at age 92. Mom died at age 82, nine months after a diagnosis of leukemia.
After their deaths in 2000 I became very interested in learning more about my
family roots.
I started my search by
speaking with the remaining members of my parents’ families. Only one of my
mother’s siblings was still alive. She was able to share information about my
maternal grandparents and their living conditions during the early decades of
the 20th
century. Four of my father’s siblings were still alive in 2000. They were able
to share information about the Skillen family. Several visits to the parish
church attended by my Skillen predecessors provided a wealth of information
about my great grandfather and several of his children. Contact with other local
churches provided information about some of my older great aunts. Census data
and church records have provided information about the couple who came with two
children from Ireland. There is much left to be
discovered about my great, great aunts and uncles Skillen who were born in
Canada. I continue my search. I
am motivated to use this web site with the hope that information about my
relatives will be brought to my attention.
I have posted a
family tree that includes
the branches of both my father and mother. Perhaps you will recognize in my
family tree the name of an ancestor to who you are attached. I welcome inquiries
that may advance our knowledge of our Skillen
roots.
Here is a document on
Francis and Mary Skillen
in Canada